101-year-old man survives Spanish flu, World War II and coronavirus

A 101-year-old Italian man born during the Spanish flu pandemic, and who grew up between two world wars, has now survived the Covid-19.

101 year old man becomes the oldest person to be recovered from coronavirus in Italy. (Reference image)

Thus the 101-year-old man just became the oldest person to be recovered from the coronavirus in Italy.

Gloria Lisi, the deputy mayor of Rimini, a city in northern Italy, said the elderly man, whom she identified only as Mr. P., had been released from the hospital earlier this week and returned to his family.

“He made it. Mr. P. did it,” said Lisi, according to ANSA news agency.

According to the mayor, this news represents “a hope for our future”, and she was very happy that the man has survived the virus and is resting at home.

“Everyone saw hope for the future in the recovery of a person over 100 years old,”Lisi said. “Every day we see sad stories that tell how the virus wreaks havoc, especially on the elderly. But Mr. P. survived,”he added.

“His family took him home on Wednesday, teaching everyone that even at the age of 101, the future is not written,”Lisi concluded.

Lisi noted that the man was born in 1919 and has seen the world change dramatically over the course of his life.

The man was born while the world was facing the Spanish flu, caused by an H1N1 virus that infected one third of the world’s population and killed some 500 million people; 675,000 of them in the United States. The pandemic spread in 1918 between the movements of World War I.

Italy is the second country, after the United States, with more coronavirus confirmed cases, with more than 90,000, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University. The country has a death toll of 9,134 as of Friday night.